Daily Cup of Tech

I woke up this morning to the news that Oracle has agreed to purchase Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.  My first reaction was, “Why would a software company want to purchase a company that is primarily hardware based?”

There are a number of possible answers to this question.

• They may want to diversify their product lines in a difficult financial time.
• They may want to secure the Java software which is key to many of their applications and even their client.
• They may want to get their hands on Glassfish, an open source server development product by Sun.

I would like to put forth my own theory.  I believe that it is possible that Oracle has purchased Sun to get control of a major competitor to their database platform: MySQL!

Database Platform Used

MySQL is the defacto standard for a number of applications, most notably many content management systems on the Internet.  For example, Wordpress runs with MySQL on the back end.  According to Sun, MySQL has 25% of market share in overall database usage by developers.  If Oracle were to get control of MySQL, there are a number of scenarios that could follow:

• They could quit providing commercial support for MySQL
• They could quit development of MySQL
• They could force MySQL customers to Oracle
• They could incorporate MySQL into Oracle and release their own open source version
• They could carve MySQL off and sell it to another company

To be honest, I’m not certain that Oracle will do with it.  I do not think that there is anything to panic about at this time but I do think that this will be a situation that we need to monitor.

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3 Responses to “Will Oracle Kill MySQL?”

1. K-IntheHouse Says:
   April 20th, 2009 at 11:24 am

   As an Oracle DBA as well as an open source supporter, I am very curious to see the direction Oracle will take with MySQL.

   Oracle has been generally making positive move towards open source like their allaince with RedHat for database support even though 99% of their product line is proprietary and they are known for their heavy handed moves.

   Of course, Oracle has to gain with this acquisition in more than one front. Their Fusion Middleware is totally based on Java and now they have complete control over Java’s future and integration into their products.

   And now they can really tie down Oracle database and Sun’s solaris software and Sun’s hardware to make a compelling package. Even though Oracle on Linux has gained traction in small/medium businesses and even some big shops, there are still businesses and DBAs who stick with Sun/HP/IBM AIX for those huge Oracle databases.

   Finally, undeniably Oracle dealt with the growing popularity of MySQL. We will just have to wait and see how this unfolds.

2. Matt Jabs Says:
   April 20th, 2009 at 11:33 am

   I guess I never thought of it this way, but it makes perfect sense!

   I suppose I would not care if Oracle swept MySQL under the rug as long as they offered a free product that was superior or at the very least equal in quality to MySQL.

3. Carlos Says:
   April 21st, 2009 at 2:33 am

   Obviously that oracle will kill mysql, besides java, that is one good language to access oracle databases, what else than mysql? Oracle also owns, InnoDB engine from mysql (which has force mysql to develop Falcon), but now oracle owns mysql…
   But at least postgresql will be even stronger with this…

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